


Why Do the Monsters Come at Night?

by Magiciseverything



Category: Original Work
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 07:43:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20926610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magiciseverything/pseuds/Magiciseverything
Summary: A short, semi autobiographical depiction of C-PTSD





	Why Do the Monsters Come at Night?

I.  
A young girl huddles in bed, watching her bedroom door, her eyes wide with terror. Her brand new teddy bear is already wet with tears. She has had too many sleepless nights for a child her age, and yet, she certainly cannot be expected to sleep when the monster had yet to appear for the night.   
Maybe it would have been easier if the monster came every night. Then she would not have to stay awake and watch and listen for any sign that he would return. The dark presses in, inescapable, and a fear of the night festers.  
She has no concept of time yet, only the knowledge that the darkness and the moon bring the monster. And the monster brings pain.

II.   
A now thirteen year old girl uses her raggedy old teddy bear as a pillow. It has long since lost the checkered ribbon that had been tied around its neck, its once bright fur now darkened with a decade's worth of dirt. She listens to the soft calm breaths of her sleeping sister in the top bunk while she stares a hole into a dark shadowy corner of the room. She has never been much good at sleeping, and the medication that is supposed to help is currently building up into a clog in the bathroom sink.  
The girl is unsure why she is so afraid to be in the dark. She doesn't remember the long nights waiting for the monster to appear, and so the muscle memory of that fright is all that remains now. She pushes herself to her feet, tiptoeing to the door and slowly creaking it open, standing stockstill to make sure no one had heard. Her footfalls are far too quiet to be noticed as she moves just one door down, closing it behind her before she turns on the bright florescent light of the bathroom. Immediately, she sinks to the floor, the cold tile of the bathroom feeling like heaven against her flushed skin. If she had thought to plan ahead, she might have brought her homework with her tonight. That was how she spent most nights, curled up on the bathroom floor doing math homework, but it's too late to remedy that now. She would make too much noise rummaging in her bag and someone might wake and find her.  
An hour passes before the knob starts to turn.  
She leaps to her feet, hands twisting in her nightgown, unable to do much more than that before the door opens.   
Her big brother stands in the doorway. This isn't the first time he has found her here, and it would not be the last. He crosses his arms and nods his head for her to follow. She knows what he's not saying, what he's threatening. Any noise and their mother just on the other side of the thin wall could wake. And he wouldn't be the one in trouble. The corner of his mouth twitching into a sadistic smirk betrays the twisted humor he finds in her panic.   
In any case, the night is still dark, too dark to be alone. So she follows the new monster down, down into the basement, where shameful secrets are cultivated and no one else ever hears a thing.   
The next morning she doesn't cry. She wouldn't be able to hide it well enough, and she doesn't have a good excuse.

III.  
There hasn't been a physical monster in almost two years. She is gone, she has escaped to some sort of freedom. But she turns back just in time to hear her baby sister's cry for help. Someone else has taken her place now that she is gone. Someone else is being hurt, and she can't justify letting another little girl suffer.  
For the first time in twenty years, she speaks the truth.  
But immediately she is silenced, she is scorned. She tries to save one innocent life, but because of her interference, her confession of sins, both of them are thrown from the safety net of family. Left to face the monsters of the night alone.  
So she finally breaks, screaming apologies into the empty air for not being strong enough to bear it, for not being smart enough to resist it, for not being good enough to deserve better.   
She seeks an end for the pain, the fear, but even in that she fails, and it's the most humiliating, dehumanizing experience of her life.

IV.  
"Ah shit, sorry, sweetie, can you turn the music down for a sec?" The girl, now no longer a girl in many more ways than one, rubs their forehead as they scrunch up in the passenger seat, their foot kicked up on the dash.   
"Another headache?" their partner asks, her eyes glancing away from the road to shoot them a worried look. They make an exaggerated pout to hide the sincerity of the pain and nod, though it's technically a lie. It isnt a headache, not yet anyway. It would be too complicated to explain what is actually happening.  
The flash of buried memory pops back up for a moment, and they shriek a little in response, holding their head tightly, before their brain quickly shuts it down before they can fully grasp whatever horrid memory it was. Their mind flinches hard away, trying to throw itself off that sloping path that led to remembering. And back and forth, repeating the sequence over and over, flashes of memory, then flinching away until their mind breaks into a starwipe of pain, and the whole time they sit silent, biting down hard on their lip to stop any sounds of distress from escaping.  
"You sure youre okay?"   
They nod and lie again. "The freaking headlights coming at me in the darkness really fuck with me, y'know. S'why I can't drive."  
She rolls her eyes. "One of the reasons, sure. And get your foot down off of there before you break something."  
They force a smile, laughing almost, but not quite naturally. "But it's comfy like this."   
And in faking calm, they are able to make the final push to shut the memories away for a little longer, and the ride goes on as normal. Maybe someday they would be strong enough to face the monster again, but not yet. Not tonight.

V.  
They don't know what the future will hold for them, or if they will ever move past this. Every night they wait until the hear their partner drift off into a loud, snoring slumber, and clamber out of the dark bedroom to curl up on the living room couch, beneath a bright lamp until they are too tired to fight sleep and stumble back into the bedroom. The only time they can sleep with out trouble is in the middle of the day, the sun brightly shining through the window. The bear that they had had for two decades had been lost in the last move, replaced with a living breathing teddy bear of a partner, who is just as good at protecting them from the dark as the stuffed one had been. Something had to give. Something had to change. And soon, or they would break again. And they know better than to fail this time.


End file.
